I am not surprised this happened. Over the past decade I have watched the integrity of the legal descriptions in ordinances deteriorate substantially and it seems almost weekly the council is amending some mistake or typo (Item #96);
This would have been quite the boo-boo.
This past year the Building Services manager had to apologize to the city council for screwing up on a fee adjustment that wasn’t caught by the council or attorney’s office but by a contractor.
The BID Tax increase was deferred because a couple of DTSF business owners cried. I don’t see any amendments and I don’t expect any tonight, this will pass easily. The Billionaire Italians bitching about this increase can afford it, oh, and will DTSF hang some damn xmas lights at Sunshine already!
“Because it would exempt the first $100,000 in valuation from taxing,” Ladner said. “Rather than a proportional cut, South Dakotans with smaller home value will get a bigger percentage tax cut from this mechanism.”
In Sioux Falls that would be about $1,500 a year tax break. Of course, I doubt this even gets out of committee considering towns, schools and counties will push back on it. It would help a lot of first time homebuyers getting into a starter home and the elderly on a fixed income.
Them’s some fancy words from our chief finance bull thrower (FF 52:00)
So what is a structural deficit?
the amount by which a government’s spending is more than it receives in taxes in a particular period, whether the economy is performing well or not
Mr. Pritchett made this wild claim at the city council meeting last night, and six of the councilors agreed with him.
It is total nonsense.
As one citizen pointed out the way to not produce municipal debt is to budget better, in other words do the job we elected you to do. He also pointed out that this $2 million dollar increase is less than 1% of the total budget and can easily be made up.
The problem is for decades the city has implemented the piling on approach to building the yearly budget instead of doing zero based budgeting each year. This has caused bloated department budgets.
As for property taxes, valuations in Sioux Falls have skyrocketed over the past 3 years driving property taxes up with or without government intervention.
Even if the economy was doing great right now, this natural FREE market increase makes up for any inflationary increases we may need.
We also have given millions away in TIFs.
It cracks me up that the city council would nickel and dime $50K for the Siouxland Heritage endowment fund and $68K for an arts coordinator, but doesn’t blink an eye approving $50 million in TIFs for parking ramps attached to luxury condos.
That’s our council doing the important work, making sure developers, banksters and bondsters are happy and well fed.
I’m starting to think the only structural deficit the city has exists between the ears of our councilors.
During the City Council meeting last night (FF 1:25:00) Pat and David spoke out against the increase siting inflation hurting citizens;
“. . . we have families struggling with high inflation and I am NOT comfortable with a property tax increase,” David Barranco.
“We sit and talk about putting the city in good financial shape and it really doesn’t take that much from the citizens, it’s only a couple of bucks here, and it’s a Coke or a cup of coffee, but if look at the chart director Pritchett presented were talking about 11 to 12 million dollars over the next 10 years that the city will be ‘SHORT’. NO, it’s the taxpayers that will be short of this money,” Pat Starr.
Their colleagues on dais SAID nothing while voting to move to 2nd reading. Starr and Barranco voted NO.
You gotta love our new found transparency with the annotated agenda and this explanation for a property tax increase (Item #59);
Background & Objective: The ordinance appropriates the tax-supported funds as part of the 2023 budget in the amount of $384,337,184 and establishes property tax revenues to be collected including the 3% inflationary adjustment as provided in South Dakota State Statute.
Even though it says right in the title of the agenda ‘INCREASE’ they explain it as an adjustment.
With inflation thru the roof and property values skyrocketing over the past year, this would be a fine time to actually CUT the property tax by 3% instead. I am hoping at least one councilor has the backbone to bring an amendment on the second reading.
Sioux Falls Citizen Mike Zitterich says it best in an email sent to council;
As we begin the final preparations to approve the 2023 Fiscal Budget over the next coming weeks, let’s remember, we are currently in a recession of which many Americans are struggling to put gas in their car, food on the table, pay rents, let alone survive. We can debate all day long whether we have a good or bad economy, based on the # of building permits, or tax dollars coming into the treasury, but let’s stop and remember, the city is very fortunate to be in a position it is in, where its effective tax revenues have remained consistently at or above previous levels. Lets also remember, just cause our direct property based taxes – Sales Tax on goods and services, and Property Tax assessed to the value of land are all based on the direct assessment of how much ‘income’ the residents of the city have, and if their incomes are restricted, then the city has some decisions to make. I have often called attention to the formality of the City Spending more than the actual state and local tax dollars received, while we have a tax base of nearly $400,000,000 million dollars, this city council body is approving a spending budget of nearly $700,000,000 million dollars. As I have done over the past 3 years, I have made the people aware of this huge deficit in public spending, in hopes to help educate the residents. That is essentially what we have here, a “Spending Deficit“
As for Agenda Item #59 – the Property Tax Assessments, there is no law that says we can or not increase the amount the ‘government’ is begging for, YOU GUYS have the lawful ability to apportion LESS, thus cutting the budget by a specific dollar amount.
The city really needs to move towards ZERO based budgeting each year to get the spending under control, but that would require the city council to actually do their jobs. You will notice that this week’s agenda has 67 items in which the mayor sponsors almost every single one besides private applicants. There are ZERO items sponsored by our legislative and policy body. I have argued that the mayor should have to get at least one councilor to co-sponsor his items.
